December’s First Friday Exhibits

First Friday is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many Downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. Listings are compiled in collaboration with Piedmont Council for the Arts. To list an exhibit, please send information two weeks before opening to arts@c-ville.com.

City Clay 301 W. Main St. “Tis the Season” features work by local potters and wheel demonstrations. 5-7:30pm

Chroma Projects 201 Second St. NW. “Alchemy,” a collaborative series by Pam Black and Lauren Taylor with Todd Leback in the Front Gallery, “Mnemonic Devices” by Kim Boggs in the Passage Gallery, and “A Study,” an installation by Corry Blancin the Black Box Gallery. 5:30-7:30pm.

Second Street Gallery 418 E. Main St. “…And Justice for Mall of America,” an installation by Brent Birnbaum in the Main Gallery and “Piñata” a video installation by students from Light House Studio in the Dové Gallery. 5:30-7:30pm. Artist talk at 6:30pm.

Speak! Language Center 313 Second St. SE, Suite 109. Rick Weaver’s watercolors of the plazzas and marketplace scenes of Cortona, Italy in the front space and Jennifer Byrne’s black and white photographic studies of Italian architecture in the main room. A collaboration with Chroma Projects Art Laboratory.

UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art 155 Rugby Rd. “Ancient Masters in Modern Styles: Chinese ink paintings from the 16th-21st centuries,” “Jean Hélion: Reality and Abstraction,” “Making Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott,” and “The Valley of the Shadow: American Landscape in the time of the Civil War.”

Visitor’s Center 610 E. Main St. “Charlottesville Mosaic: A City of Neighborhoods,” as part of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society’s cooperation with Celebrate!250.

Check out PCA’s Google Map of local galleries and cultural hotspots to plan your visit.

If you’ve never heard of Jordan Rock, who’ll take the stage at Piedmont Virginia Community College on February 28, you can be forgiven. He’s never played Charlottesville, and his Web presence isn’t exactly on the level of an “Ultimate Split.” Come to think of it, his Web presence isn’t really

Author Edwidge Danticat weaves stories of strong women overcoming hardship and forging new identities in unfamiliar places. Born in Haiti, Danticat moved to Brooklyn when she was 12 years old, and the experience of transporting from one culture to another has since informed her writing, which

Robin Wynn said Google might lead you astray if you’re looking to find out what she’s up to these days. A C’ville-based songwriter who toured extensively from 2005 to 2008 and saw one of her songs get attention from NPR’s “All Songs Considered,” Wynn recently licensed a tune to the CW show

Why is popularity always the reward for quirky high schoolers in movies where the whole plot is about learning to be happy without it? You don’t celebrate your twelfth step with a shot, you don’t get a mansion after reaching nirvana, but somehow our teenage morality scripts are still peddling

Observing the fantastic world of The Convolution of Pip and Twig, it’s as if you’ve stepped through the looking glass and into a children’s pop-up book. The minimal, vibrant set uses low tech manipulations, visual metaphor and physical magic to tell a story almost entirely without words, and

Mid-month is usually a pretty quiet time in a local art gallery. First Fridays crowds have long since returned home and the promise of free wine and cheese is a faint memory. But the downtown Charlottesville gallery scene isn’t dead between opening and closing receptions. Many would argue that

The creators of the original singing Tesla coils are ready to blind you with science at ArcAttack. Backed by a robotic drummer, the group of high-tech rock wizards creates a musical spectacle by generating electrical arcs—each reaching up to 12 feet long—that act as instruments, creating

Nickel Creek, a band synonymous with progressive string music for more than 25 years, is no more—for real this time—and founding member Sean Watkins doesn’t seem to give a hoot. Co-founded by Chris Thile, Watkins and his sister Sara, the trio disbanded after a highly successful year. The band

Confession: I’ve never read a comic book. Sure, I housed volumes of Calvin & Hobbes as a child, but I always took the snooty literary view of comics. They were fine for teenage boys and any woman inexplicably drawn to gratuitous violence and triple-D boobs, but I reserved my highbrow tastes

I don’t know who or what director Sam Taylor-Johnson sacrificed to the god of false bondage, but it worked: Fifty Shades of Grey is the best film it could have possibly been given the circumstances. This is quite a different thing from saying it’s good. It’s not. At its core, this adaptation of

UVA Drama presents an evening of “bite-size” dramas entitled Vodka Variations, adapted from short stories by Anton Chekhov. The production examines the colorful world of 1890s Russia with hilarious and heartwarming glimpses into the lives of everyday people in search of love, happiness and a

Charlottesville is a music town, no doubt. What other small city can boast that it’s seen the likes of The Rolling Stones, U2 and Lady Gaga come through, not to mention hosts a healthy local scene that’s launched a couple of groups into straight-up rock stardom and keeps a slew of smaller

In January, Charlottesville audiences experienced Renée Fleming’s artistry on the big screen at The Paramount Theater’s HD broadcast of The Metropolitan Opera’s live performance of Lehar’s The Merry Widow. On Friday, February 20, Fleming will grace the stage in person, and while opera houses

There’s something about the trees. As I walk through the exhibit, I pause to study each painting, but the trunk of a pastel pine tree stops me. Every stroke on its limbs is a living gesture, each green leaf and blue shadow a flick. The pastel landscape glows with the artist’s movements, each

Celebrate Fat Tuesday in style by tapping into those Southern roots. The Jazz Rascals warm up the evening with a set of Dixieland jazz. The nine-piece ragtime group performs traditional numbers by such greats as Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith, and Duke Ellington. Jolie Fille takes the late

Sing and dance your Valentine’s blues away at the theme night Unlucky in Love: A Night of Outlaw Country with a Side of Garage with four of central Virginia’s rowdiest honky-tonk acts. Drunk Luke & The Broken Bottles bring some raucous country sing-alongs about frolicking, fighting, and

The room will be filled with love long before the first guest arrives at the second annual Country Sweethearts Valentine’s Day show at the Southern on Saturday. The women on the bill, Terri Allard, Holly Renee Allen, Tara Mills and Sally Rose, have such affection and admiration for each other

Every Wachowski movie, for better or worse, is a passion project. There is no theme, visual detail, character or line of dialogue to which the sibling duo does not have a deep personal attachment, from the hopeful nihilism of The Matrix to Cloud Atlas’ meditation on reincarnation and the risk

Aspiring yogis and curious connoisseurs of contemporary art, unite! Second Street Gallery is hosting another installment of the monthly Second Saturday Yoga Art Grooves series that launched in the fall of 2014. A collaboration between Opal Yoga and Second Street Gallery, each event in the

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island gets an update in a new stage adaptation broadcast from London’s National Theatre. Adapted by Bryony Lavery and directed by Polly Findlay, the well-known tale of money, murder and mutiny uses wit and casting twists to keep the energy on high. The